Surprise Packages

by Layla Valentine

  “Down!” he demands, pounding a fist on my shoulder. “Down!”

  Unlike his sister, who adores being carried, Vito wants to walk everywhere he goes. The better to get into trouble, I can only imagine. I ignore his demand and carry him back to the room where I’ve been getting ready for the day’s events.

  Alex’s cousin Ilaria looks up from her makeup as we walk in. “How did he get out of the playpen?”

  “I have no idea,” I admit. “He’s a little escape artist.” I set him down next to his sister, find his favorite stuffed alligator, and hand it to him. “That ought to keep him busy until Lauro gets here to pick them up.”

  “I hope so,” Ilaria says. “You need to start getting ready.”

  “The wedding isn’t for two more hours,” I point out. “I have plenty of time.”

  “That isn’t plenty of time,” she says. “People are already arriving. The ballroom is full of guests who aren’t attending the church ceremony.”

  “You’re kidding. I didn’t see anyone in the foyer.”

  “Well they’re not being permitted to linger around there. The butlers are escorting them straight up.” Ilaria shakes her head at me and smiles. “Sometimes I forget how new you are to all this. You are marrying the king today, you know. It’s a very big deal. The whole thing is tightly organized.”

  “I’m beginning to see that,” I say.

  In my defense, Alex has only been king for a few months, since his father voluntarily abdicated. Just when I was getting used to life with a prince, he rose to power. And today I’m marrying him. The king of Avaran, my husband!

  I consider myself lucky in that the people of my new adopted country have welcomed me and my nontraditional family with open arms. After the conflict with Parliament, I was concerned about how the Avaranian public would respond to the news of our engagement. But I shouldn’t have worried. Everyone seems to agree that the stability of a nuclear family is what’s best for the children. Not only that, the public appearances I’ve done since I’ve been here have gone well. Everyone has responded to me very positively. Avaran truly seems to like me.

  And I like Avaran. I like the city; the way people trade in open markets right across the street from corporate stores. I like visiting the shore with Alex and his family, letting the children play in the sand and kick at the waves as they crash on the beach. And I love the people. They’re fiercely proud of their country. I admire them for it.

  But Alex being the king hasn’t always been easy. It comes with a lot of responsibilities. Most of those involve governing, which is, of course, a big job.

  I’ve done my best to be a good support system for him. In the evenings, after the children have gone to bed, we sit together and I listen as he tells me about disputes he’s settled and decisions he’s made on behalf of the country. Often, he asks me for my advice. It’s a bit frightening to advise someone so powerful, knowing that if he acts on something I say it will have real-world consequences for the people of Avaran. But it’s a bit heady too. My ideas, my insights, can actually help people on a significant scale. It’s an amazing thing.

  I’ve also had a lot of opportunities I never would have had in my old life. Alex was wrong when he compared being royal to being famous in America. The two are nothing alike.

  As an actress, I met other people in the entertainment industry sometimes, and I had fans and fancy dresses to wear to award shows. But now, going through the world on Alex’s arm, it’s completely different. The palace is surrounded by armed guards, and I see them in the halls all the time. That took a lot of getting used to. Their training forbids them from talking to me while they’re on duty, so I have to treat each one like a piece of furniture instead of a human. It’s a habit Vito and Marianna have already picked up just by watching us—though they both run to engage everyone else they see, from butler to visiting heads of state.

  It was a relief, in a way, to go back to LA in the months leading up to King Donato’s decision to pass the throne to Alex. We had obtained permission to spend a few months living in California so that I could shoot one final season of Royal Blue before leaving the show for good. I’ll always be grateful to my new father-in-law for agreeing to that—it allowed me to leave the show gracefully without having to separate our family.

  Filming my last season was bittersweet. I’d planned on staying with the show for much longer, but nobody faulted me for the choice I was making. To my delight, the showrunners didn’t even kill off Princess Aeryn. In a nod to the events of my real life, they had her marry a distant prince and travel abroad to rule his kingdom as a warrior queen. It made a great ending for the character I’d put so much of my heart into.

  And being back in LA let me tie up some other loose ends too. I turn to my second bridesmaid, who has been fussing with her hair for the past twenty minutes.

  “Lizzie, leave it alone. It looks fine.”

  “I told them I wanted an updo,” Lizzie protests.

  “That is an updo. What are you talking about?”

  “No, but I meant like…up.” She waves a hand around the crown of her head, several inches above where her hair has been arranged in a chignon.

  I have to smile. Lizzie will never change, not even as a member of the king’s wedding party. I’m just glad I had the chance to heal our friendship while I was back in LA. I wouldn’t have felt right leaving things the way we did.

  Of course, Lizzie, being Lizzie, had no idea I was ever upset with her at all.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked when I told her I wanted to put it behind us. “We didn’t have a fight.”

  And, in her defense, I never had told her I’d overheard her gossiping about me. When I confessed to having overheard that conversation, she turned bright red.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m such a mess when I’ve had a few glasses of wine. God, I know how you felt about that stupid magazine article. You must have been so pissed off.”

  “I was mostly just embarrassed,” I admitted. “But I’m over it now. And I’m sorry I used it as a reason not to tell you about Alex back then, and about what was going on with us. You’re my best friend, Lizzie. I don’t want anything to come between us.”

  “It won’t,” she promised. “Never again.”

  As a testament to our newly repaired friendship, I invited Lizzie to come to Avaran a week before the wedding. She’s been staying at the palace, and she’s had a great time experiencing royal life for herself. She took to it much more naturally than I did at first, taking full advantage of all the services the household staff offered. I followed her as she explored the palace, enjoying it vicariously through her eyes as she saw my new life for the first time.

  It was a strange feeling, showing off the palace and the country of Avaran as if it were my own, but it was fulfilling at the same time. This is my home now, after all. Avaranian royalty is who I am.

  As much as Lizzie loved the palace, she loved the children even more. I’ve never thought of her as someone who particularly warms to kids, but she and Vito and Marianna are as thick as thieves these days. She’s spent every evening with them since she’s been here in Avaran, giving Alex and me a much-needed break. Thanks to her help, we’ve found ourselves able to spend time together every evening in the week leading up to the wedding, a luxury we’re not often afforded between the demands of raising two toddlers and running a country.

  Lizzie gives up on her hair and stands. “Ilaria is right. You need to get into your dress.” She indicates the elaborate gown that was tailor-made for me. “That thing is going to take us forever to figure out. Why don’t you have a royal dresser? You’re a princess.”

  Lizzie has proven fond of ending sentences with “you’re a princess,” usually as a tag to some query about why I don’t have something she feels I should.

  “I don’t like being dressed by strangers,” I say. “You already know that. I never liked being helped into costume on the set of Royal Blue.”

  Liz
zie laughs. “That’s true. I used to think maybe that was the driving force behind your whole character development. Maybe they wrote Aeryn as a princess who wears pants just so you’d be able to dress yourself. I’ve seen stranger things in Hollywood.”

  Ilaria, over by the window now, calls out to us. “Quick, come and see this.”

  Lizzie and I run over and peer out. The street is packed, lined with Avaranian citizens on either side, the crowd so thick I can’t begin to guess at how many it contains. It looks like a parade route.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “What are they doing?”

  Lizzie rolls her eyes. “It’s for you, silly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re celebrating the wedding,” Ilaria says. “Look, there’s a TV news crew.”

  Sure enough, a woman with a microphone and man with a camera have set up several yards away, well off the palace grounds.

  “They’re reporting on the wedding,” I say aloud. Of course, on one level I understood that this was a big deal, that it would be national news, but it’s something else to see it playing out.

  “There’s so many of them,” Ilaria says. “It’s a shame we couldn’t invite more people to the event itself.”

  “How many are coming?” Lizzie asks.

  “Only about a hundred to the church,” I say. “It’s a tiny building, but generations of Gosars have been married there. So we invited our families and friends and a few notable people—members of Parliament, foreign heads of state, things like that. And then everyone we couldn’t fit into the church is invited to join us at the reception. That’s why there are already people upstairs in the ballroom. They’re so early, though.”

  “Not so early now,” Ilaria says. “Come on. Let’s get you into your dress.”

  Together, my bridesmaids help me into my wedding dress, careful not to smudge my makeup or mess up my hair. It takes both of them to lace it up the back.

  I admire myself in the mirror as they do. The dress is absolutely regal, and though it’s hard to truly believe it, I feel like a princess wearing it. I feel like the woman looking back at me is someone who should be marrying a king today.

  The church is only a block away, but there’s a car to take me and my bridesmaids over. Lizzie stares out the window at the waving well-wishers as we drive past them. Ilaria adjusts and readjusts my veil. All I can do is look down at my hands, drawing in and releasing deep breaths, trying to stay calm. I’m surprised to find myself having stage fright—after all, I’ve appeared on television dozens of times—but this is different. This time I’m appearing as myself.

  The only thing that keeps me calm is the thought of what awaits me at the end of this car ride. Soon I’ll be seeing Alex. He and I have already been through so much together. Compared to that, today will be a cakewalk.

  The car drops us off outside the church, and we head up the stairs. My father is waiting for me in the atrium. He hugs me, careful not to disturb any aspect of my carefully arranged appearance.

  “You look beautiful,” he says, his voice husky with the kind of emotion he generally doesn’t like to show. “I’m so proud of you, Erica.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say, blushing. “Did Lauro bring the kids over yet?”

  “He did. They’re with your mother and Alex’s parents,” he says. “Waiting to see their parents tie the knot.”

  “Good.”

  I was reluctant to let them out of my sight today, not because I don’t have confidence in Lauro’s ability to look after them—he has children of his own, after all, and Alex vouched for him—but just because there are so many people around. My children have been exposed to a lot of things, but crowds of people have never been so close to them. I’m a little nervous about how they might react.

  “And they’re doing all right?” I ask.

  “Just like any toddlers in a situation like this would be, I imagine,” Dad says. “They’re curious. They’re restless. But they’re okay.”

  He smiles. “You’re so like your mother. You worry about them so much. I’ll never forget her calling the emergency room at three in the morning because you had a stomachache.” He rests a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so lucky to see you become a mother yourself.”

  “God, Dad…” I swallow hard. “I don’t want to ruin my makeup before I even get in there. Let the cameras get at least a couple shots of me looking nice.”

  He laughs. “Don’t worry about that. You just enjoy today, okay? Don’t worry about what anyone else is thinking.”

  I’m an actress. I’m a princess. My whole adult life has been about paying attention to the way I’m perceived. That’s all I’ve ever done. But my father’s words strike a deep chord in me, and something seems to release.

  He’s right. Today isn’t about putting on a show for the people of Avaran. I want my new country to be included in this, of course, but today is really for me and Alex. That’s what this is all about. Me, Alex, Vito, and Marianna.

  And all my nervousness suddenly drains away.

  I expected to cry walking down the aisle. I expected to be focused on holding back tears, not wanting my face to go blotchy before we can say our vows. But to my pleasant surprise, as the music swells and Dad takes my arm and leads me through the door, I feel no urge to cry at all. Instead, a huge smile breaks across my face, like the rising sun.

  Alex is waiting for me at the altar. He’s dressed in full military regalia and looks so devastatingly handsome that I actually can’t believe it’s me he’s waiting there for. He meets my eyes as I walk to him, holding my gaze until my father has placed my hand in his.

  We deliberately planned the ceremony to mix historic Avaranian traditions with ideas of our own, making it unique. We follow the basic structure of an Avaranian wedding, reciting the usual words a couple says to each other, overseen by a minister. Because it’s a royal wedding, the national anthem is played, and an honor guard is put through a perfunctory exercise. But when it comes time to say I do, Alex and I deviate from tradition. This is our wedding, after all, and for these few minutes, it will be as my father described it—about the two of us and no one else.

  Alex speaks first. He slides a beautiful wedding band onto my finger.

  “Erica, when I met you in that hotel in Los Angeles, I had no idea who you would become to me. I had no way of knowing how our lives would intertwine. And now, just two years later, standing here beside you, I find it’s impossible to imagine a life without you. The fact that I lived so long without you in my life is incomprehensible now, and I’m so thankful that I’ll never have to do it again. Now that I know you, I know I could never let you go.”

  I take his hands in mine, sliding a wedding band onto his finger.

  “Alex, you were the first person to see me as a princess,” I say. “Millions of people saw me play a princess on TV. But you were the first person to see me, Erica Steadman, and think that I was regal. To me, you have always been a prince. But I want you to know that I would marry you if you lived in a one-room apartment. I would marry you no matter what. Because what makes you the man I love doesn’t come from titles or money. It comes from your heart.”

  Without waiting for the minister’s say-so, Alex wraps his arms around me and kisses me, and my ears fill with the sweet sound of applause.

  The minister gives his blessing and we turn, wide smiles on our faces as we walk arm in arm down the aisle, taking our first steps together as king and queen, husband and wife.

  The End

  We hope you’ve enjoyed Alex and Erica’s story! Sign up to Layla’s mailing list and be the first to hear about all her new releases.

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  Dr. O’s Baby

  Time for a tease!

  Up next is the first chapter of the previous book in our Baby Surprises series, Dr. O’s Baby

  Happy reading!

  Layla & Holly x

  Copyright 2019 by Layla Valentine

&n
bsp; All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Carmen

  “To Tyra! Happy birthday, girl.”

  “To thirty!”

  “To crawling ever closer to a mid-life crisis!”

  “Oh my God, Val, why?” I laughed in shock as Valeria flashed me a wicked grin.

  “Whatever, ladies, I live on the edge,” Tyra said, tossing her thick, dark hair back. “You can’t scare me.”

  “I bet I can,” Alana said smirking. She dropped her voice dramatically, as if she were telling a scary story around the campfire. “Even as we speak, your eggs are shriveling up and dying, neglected and alone…”

  Tyra screamed wordlessly and smacked Alana with her purse. Alana flung her head backward laughing, and the other girls joined in.

  I’m sure it was hilarious. I, however, couldn’t see the humor. I had turned thirty ten months prior, being the first of our group to reach that particular milestone, and while Tyra had a loving fiancé and a spare room just dying to become a nursery, I had a cheap loft apartment in the city and nobody to share it with.

  “You know that’s a myth, right?” Staci chimed in, flipping her bleached tips over her shoulder. “Eggs don’t go ‘bad’ like that. You’re a woman, not a refrigerator.”